One persistent misperception of the relationship between science and religion is the notion that the two are locked in a perpetual battle between the force of human reason represented by scientific knowledge and the unsophisticated or even superstitious naïveté of religious belief. Although this view is common among laypersons and even many scientists, this supposed “conflict” has long been considered a simplistic understanding of a complex interrelationship by historians of religion and modern thought. James C. Ungureanu opens Science, Religion, and the Protestant Tradition: Retracing the Origins of Conflict by surveying the various ways scholars of the 20th and 21st centuries have described the complicated relationship between religion and science.
A consistent idea across much of this scholarship is the notion that two key 19th-century works—John William Draper’s History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (D. Appleton and Co., 1874) and Andrew Dickson White’s A History of the Warfare between Science and Theology in Christendom (D. Appleton and Co., 1896)—were instrumental in creating the “conflict” notion. Ungureanu’s central thesis is that, despite the titles of Draper’s and White’s works, neither author saw an inherent conflict or contradiction between religious belief and scientific knowledge. Rather than identifying early salvos in the “battle” between New Atheism and religious fundamentalism, the two books trace how Catholicism and traditional Protestantism clashed with the modern liberal strains of Protestantism that emerged in the 19th century.
Ungureanu begins by examining each book not as an individual scholarly work but in the larger context of each author’s whole body of work and its position within the intellectual environment of which the two writers were a part. According to Ungureanu, Draper’s work is largely aimed at repudiating the Roman Catholic response to science and explicitly excludes consideration of Protestant and Orthodox views. Draper’s History of the Conflict is essentially a digest of the author’s earlier works, which saw reason as the appropriate way to approach both science and religion. While he was not especially concerned with Christian theology, Draper held to a version of natural theology which saw a divine force or person behind the immutable laws which govern the physical world described by science. He coupled this with a view of history which saw progress as the overarching story of humanity. In this context, Draper presents a view of the relationship between religion and science in which science and rationalism repudiate the superstition and authoritarianism found within the Catholic church but implicitly support the more rational theology characterized by liberal Protestant thought. His focus on history and human progress parallels earlier Protestant critiques of Catholic doctrines and institutions on historical and rational grounds.
Beginning with an 1869 lecture and culminating in the publication of the two-volume History of the Warfare nearly three decades later, White consistently argued for the thesis that both religion and science were sorely damaged by interference with science on behalf of religion. Although his initial work was nonspecific in terms of what aspect of religion was behind such interference, White eventually narrowed his target to “dogmatic theology,” which sought to assert its own superiority over scientific reasoning. In History of the Warfare, he specifically noted this as a difference between his view and the view of Draper, who White understood to be challenging religious thought in general. However, Ungureanu notes that White was often more devastating than Draper in his criticism of both Protestant and Catholic thought. He argues that, rather than restoring earlier, more rational theological emphases, White sought to overturn traditional theology entirely in order to institute a new form of Christianity which found truth in humanity’s understanding of the universe itself rather than an improved reading of Biblical texts.
Ungureanu next traces the roots of Draper’s and White’s philosophical and theological arguments from the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century through the secularization of American intellectual discourse in general and its educational system in particular, accomplished by the last quarter of the 19th century. One of the highlights of the latter period was White’s co-founding and presidency of Cornell University. The Protestant Reformation itself can be seen as part of an effort by European intellectuals to create societies centered around rationalism in rejection of papal authority and Catholic control of religion. The modern humanist understanding of religion that emerged emphasized personal piety and allowed for rational interpretations of religious doctrines and beliefs. The success of the Reformation in England led directly to the liberal Protestantism and humanist theologies espoused by both Draper and White.
While both scholars perceived liberal Protestantism as the future of Christianity, Ungureanu identifies a third figure, Edward Livingston Youmans, as the popularizer of the notion that both authors’ work pointed the way to an evolution of religion which would move beyond traditional theistic understandings of spirituality. In addition to publishing both History of the Conflict and History of the Warfare, Youmans was the editor of Popular Science Monthly. In these pages, the voices of Thomas Huxley, John Tyndall, and Herbert Spencer regularly extolled the virtues of scientific naturalism, which they saw as a kind of spiritual understanding of reality which reconciled religious belief with rational scientific thought, severely limiting literal understandings of the Bible. Notably, these thinkers believed that the real issue with religion was not spiritual understanding itself, but rather “ecclesiasticism” or church authoritarianism which sought to restrict or interfere with a rational understanding of the world. While the appearance of work by Draper and White in Popular Science Monthly was limited, Youmans’ editorializing of the content suggested that both scholars shared his own view of the conflicting nature of traditional religious belief and scientific knowledge.
Although the finer points of Ungureanu’s argument are often subtle, he draws out the distinct positions held by Draper and White in enough detail to convince a reader that something other than a simple conflict between science and religion was being addressed in their work. His own work is comprehensively presented, meticulously documented, and exhaustively referenced. While there will no doubt be scholars who disagree with his conclusions, particularly the extent to which Draper and White believed liberal Protestantism to be compatible with traditional Christian doctrine, his argument that the assumption that their work represents an early expression of the conflict model is mistaken cannot be readily ignored. Future considerations of the history of the science and religion relationship will need to consider the well-founded argument presented in this book.
Jim Sharp is an adjunct instructor of religious studies and philosophy at Colorado State University Pueblo.
Jim Sharp
Date Of Review:
March 22, 2022